


Wherever you go i'll be with you

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcoholism, Bisexual Male Character, Death and Dying, Found Families, Grief, Multi, Old Age, did i erase jughead from existence? yes, i have a lot of bruce springsteen songs i could quote.... but i wont, in memoriam, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 00:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21485263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: FP's eighty this year, which is sixty years more than he ever thought he’d live. Gone are the days, though, that he wishes to die. He has his three grandkids that he adores, and he is never lonely. His life has been long and not without purpose, he’s proud of what he’s done. He’s lived quietly and humbly, even happily: the long life he had always believed Fred Andrews would have.or, Archie and FP come together in the wake of Fred's death.
Relationships: Archie Andrews & FP Jones II, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Fred Andrews/FP Jones II, reggie mantle/kevin keller (mentioned)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 32





	Wherever you go i'll be with you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualfpjones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualfpjones/gifts).

> happy monday? ive been writing this for awhile and ive had enough... it's just to make briana cry anyway i can't say for sure if anyone else will appreciate it. time jumps all over the place in this one so sorry if that derails your experience. oh and also my math is definitely off dont read the dates good god. like read them but dont... read them. cuz who knows how old anyone is anymore i dont. im already regretting posting this. 
> 
> title from the flame by cheap trick 
> 
> "i dont really blame you for being dead but you can't have your sweater back"  
\- richard siken

His hands shake now; a persistent tremor that never goes away, even when he’s calm or sleeping. His grip is weak, and he forgets things sometimes, though these moments of confusion, for better or for worse, never become permanent. FP keeps his memories, all of them: the good and the bad. 

He’s eighty this year, which is sixty years more than he ever thought he’d live. The clock had really seemed to be winding down on him ten years ago, when the liver he’d drank to irreparable damage had started to fail him. He’d been prepared then to die - he’d been prepared his whole life to die, honestly, and was still surprised that he’d made it this far. But he was alive. He’d grown ill in the last year, but was overall in better shape than most of the others at his retirement home, where to Archie’s amusement he enjoyed a kind of repeat BMOC status among some of the older females. 

Football is an old, old memory for him now: FP squints even in glasses and his legs aren’t what they used to be. Most days now he sits quietly by the window and watches the birds at the feeder, tiring himself out by getting up for meals that, while tasty, never vary from the consistency of over-boiled porridge. Gone are the days, though, that he wishes to die. He has his three grandkids that he adores, and he is never lonely. His life has been long and not without purpose, he’s proud of what he’s done. He’s lived quietly and humbly, even happily: the long life he had always believed Fred Andrews would have. 

Not a day goes by that FP doesn’t think of his best friend. Some of the memories hurt when he revisits them, but he forces himself to, regardless. He would never forgive himself if he started to forget, though admittedly, forgetting the love of his life still seems impossible. 

“You can put me down when I start calling you Fred,” he tells Archie jokingly one day at lunch, when he had fumbled on his godson’s name for just a moment, distracted by a shaft of shadow that had passed through his copper hair and turned it closer to brown. 

Archie had smiled in a way that was happy and sad and squeezed his hand tightly. 

“You already do,” he replies. “Sometimes. But I like it." 

* * *

2019

Archie was numb. There was no other word for it. 

It was a month from the day that his world had ended. Veronica had asked him to dinner at a new cafe on Main Street, and he had gone, and even eaten, and held a conversation for the past forty-five minutes, but he had felt and heard and tasted none of it. His body was here, on the seat, but his mind is not here. His mind is not anywhere. 

The loss of his dad is swallowing him slowly, a pain he can’t compare to anything else in his life. He had been faintly relieved when Veronica had excused herself two minutes ago to the washroom - probably the longest time she’d left him alone since Fred’s passing - only  _ relief  _ wasn’t really the right word, because that implied emotion, implied more than he had to give. In a tired sort of way he was grateful to have a moment to himself, but none of it really made a difference. 

His eyes are fixed blankly on the window, where a hunched figure in a ragged coat is stumbling toward the liquor store. The sight is depressing but unusual - Riverdale’s homeless problem was mostly invisible on this side of town, particularly in the warm summer months when tourist season was at its peak. Archie watches the man disappear into the store, feeling the absence of pity where there should be any emotion at all, the dark pit in him where there was nothing. He tries to assign meaning to the image but finds nothing, only watches with glazed eyes because he’s too tired to turn his head away. 

It’s not until the homeless man is leaving, brown paper bag in hand, that Archie recognizes him with the closest thing to a real jolt of emotion since his dad had passed. 

FP’s been missing since the funeral, simply  _ gone _ , vanished, and though the adults in his life spoke furtively of what they assumed was a downward spiral into self-destruction, no one actually knew for sure. Gladys had come back for Jellybean’s sake, but even she couldn’t find him. In fact, she seemed to know more than anyone that it would be futile to keep trying. She and Jellybean were back in Toledo now, and FP was still missing. 

Archie watches him walk, tries to reach him somehow through the glass with his mind. He doesn’t know what he’s trying to communicate, only wishes he could reach out and connect with him somehow, FP’s haggard appearance a mirror to the depths of his own despair. The thought may be traitorous to his mother, whose methodical calm in the face of tragedy he was usually grateful for, but in this moment it seems to him that FP was the only real person who could begin to understand how he was feeling. 

He’s still watching when FP’s legs slide out from under him and he crumples to the side of the road. From this angle his body is almost invisible in the dirt - a prone, dark shape that could be a scrap of rubber or cloth in the ditch. Archie jumps to his feet and stares at the place where he’s lying, waits for him to stand, or even to try, but FP doesn’t get up. He keeps standing and staring and still FP doesn’t get up. 

“Veronica!” Archie shouts in the direction of the toilets, startled by the sound of his own voice, never taking his eyes off FP’s form. “Veronica!” 

No one comes. Archie’s already running, out the front door of the cafe, tearing across the busy road and headlong into traffic without looking. A horn honks, and someone yells his name from far behind him - Veronica at last, maybe, but Archie doesn’t stop. He drops hard to his knees next to FP, who’s on his back, the smell of alcohol so strong coming off of his skin that Archie gags involuntarily. His face and clothes are filthy and unrecognizable, his eyes half-open and his body twitching in the dirt. There are low coughing, choking sounds issuing from the back of his throat, and Archie realizes at once that he can’t breathe. 

Moving on autopilot, purposeful for the first time in a month, he rolls FP over onto his side as he forces his fingers into his throat, scooping vomit out of his mouth with his bare hand. “Breathe,” Archie’s pleading, his fingernails scraping the inside of FP’s mouth, digging frantically to try and clear his airway. “Breathe, breathe, please breathe.” 

FP gags and chokes harder, vomit spraying his lips. He’s trying to catch his breath, but every gasp seems to suck more vomit into his lungs, making him cough over and over again, growing weaker every time. Archie rolls him further onto his stomach, patting him hard on the back, CPR his next thought as he frantically seizes his wrist and feels for a pulse. 

“CALL 9-1-1!” he barks at Veronica, on the sidewalk, what looked like the owner of the cafe and the growing crowd of people who had gathered to stare. To his relief, he can hear the sound of FP drawing in breath again, harsh and laboured, but breathing. It occurs to him that the bottle had broken when FP had fallen - his hands and knees are bleeding from the shattered glass. 

“I’ve got you,” Archie whispers - or maybe he’s screaming it. His ears are blocked and the adrenaline is making him dizzy. He pulls FP into a sitting position up against his chest, forcing him to lean forward in case he starts choking again. “You’re okay, you’re okay now.” 

“Freddie-” FP grunts, his voice hoarse and confused. 

Archie screws his eyes shut, the name like a stab in the heart. “You’re okay,” he repeats to the older man, tears flooding into his eyes. “You’re going to be okay.” 

“Fred.” FP’s hand grabs his wrist, crushing his pulse. He sounds like he’s crying too, his voice rough and clumsy and almost unrecognizable. “Shit- fuck. I’m sorry.  _ Fred. _ ” 

There’s a whole crowd around them on the sidewalk now, no one bothering to crouch down, only looking. Archie bends forward, arms still supporting FP, and buries his face into the back of his neck, where the collar of his shirt reeks like booze and vomit and smoke and sweat. He hides his face there where no one can see him, ignoring the smell and the way FP keeps asking for  _ Fred, Fred, _ like anyone will answer, keeps murmuring in response  _ you’re okay _ because he’s not cruel enough to tell him the truth. He waits until he can hear the far-off sound of an ambulance siren, and only then does he raise his head from the dark, tears running so fast and hard down his cheeks that the world around him is only a blur. 

* * *

**Now. **

At age seventy-five he has a partial liver transplant, a risky surgery that promises little success to his already damaged body. FP is old and the ravages of his youth are catching up to him: the chance of the surgery improving his life is greatly outweighed by the chance of failure. Without it, though, his death will be certain and painful. He’s grown weak in his old age, and will likely not get another shot. He talks it over with Mary - his voice of reason, even now - and decides to go under the knife. 

Archie cries before they take him in for surgery. The grandkids - Archie’s redheaded brood, a pair of fraternal twins and their one older sister - are safely at home with their mother. They will miss him a little if things go south, but they are young and will forget the hurt in time. FP’s made his peace with death, feels nothing but safe when he thinks of the end of the road. The last too-many years of his life have felt like borrowed time, like he was cheating and flying under the radar, inappropriately alive in a world where Fred Andrews was gone. 

Archie now is almost as old as Fred was: he has his father’s jawline and soft eyes and penchant for dramatics. He cries like his heart is breaking when they talk about the end, and FP is overcome with love for the young man who he considers, in every way but blood, his own son. Archie’s almost fifty and FP’s never been more proud. He holds his grandson’s hand in his frail grip in the hospital bed, just in case it is the last time. 

(It’s Archie marries Veronica, in the end, by the way. Archie had come out to FP as bisexual during a long distance car ride a few months after Fred was gone. He’d dated a couple of men since, even a good few years with Reggie Mantle in college, but had come back to his high school sweetheart for keeps. Reggie lives in New York with Kevin Keller, now, and they send bi-weekly cheques to the rec centre. FP thinks Fred would have liked that.) 

“I’ll tell him you say hi,” he says softly before they take him away, and Archie smiles with tears in his eyes and says  _ could you, please _ . 

He doesn’t get the chance: It was all for nothing, really. The surgery works out and he wakes up in recovery to a trio of construction paper and glitter Get Well cards. His borrowed time keeps ticking away, and FP’s resigned to the possibility that he’s going to die of old age. 

It’s okay. It doesn’t feel like a curse anymore. It hasn’t for awhile. 

* * *

2019

“Hey, Red.” 

Archie blinks blearily into consciousness, aware first of the stiffness in his neck, the beep of the heart monitor burrowing into the headache under his left eye. However wrecked he feels after the past few hours spent by FP’s hospital bed, though, the other man’s condition can only be ten thousand times more painful. 

FP is looking at him with a tortured gaze, looking worse than Archie’s ever seen him, worse than Archie’s ever seen  _ anyone _ . There’s no colour at all to his face: his skin everywhere is ashen grey and devoid of life. His lips are cracked beyond repair and so pale that they’re transparent, a permanent watery pinkness around his eyes the only sign that he hasn’t been drained of blood. They’d cleaned him up some at the hospital but his face is still filthy, the smell of alcohol and vomit as potent in the room as it had been on the street. 

He seems to have aged a thousand years in the month since Archie had seen him last - there are new lines on his face and all his skin seems to hang on him wrong, like his face had melted off and been reapplied. He’s clearly lost weight, he hasn’t shaved in a month, and his hair is hanging down into his eyes. FP looks like a different person, but his soft, apologetic voice when he clears his throat and speaks is the most normal he’s sounded all day. 

“I think I put you through some shit today, kid.” 

“It’s okay,” says Archie automatically, pity and grief unfurling in his heart in a way that almost relieves him. He hadn’t felt anything at all for so long. 

“It’s not okay,” replies FP, and sucks in a breath that looks like it hurt, his face pinched and tears that had never really dried still falling. His voice is rough - it sounds like speaking scrapes his throat raw. “It’s not okay, I’m sorry.” 

Archie reaches out and puts his hand on the blankets, and FP’s cold hand clutches his, his face crumpling as Archie gives his weak fingers a squeeze. 

“You’re just like your dad, you know.” 

Archie swallows a lump in his throat.  _ I’m not ready for this _ , he wants to say, but it does mean a lot to hear it, and he doesn’t want to stop FP from speaking. 

FP just looks at him for second, dark tunnels circling his eyes in his sunken face. “Your dad was a hero too. Always a hero. He would have done the same thing, for anyone, and damn the consequences. Put his life on the line time after time for other people. He saved my life so many times.” A sob rips through his frail body, tears running down his nose and chin. “I never got to thank him.” 

Archie swallows hard, trying to find a voice to speak, but FP shakes his head suddenly and tightens his grip on Archie’s hand, cutting him off, his eyes intense. 

“You’re good, Red. You’re good people.” 

“You’re all I have left of him,” interrupts Archie, his voice trembling with the force of emotion behind the words. He hadn’t realized how much he meant them until he was speaking. “I can’t lose you, okay? I can’t lose you too.” 

FP’s mouth falls open slightly, and then he covers his face with the hand with the IV in it, shaking from head to foot as he cries. Archie stands instinctively, kneeling without hesitation and throwing his arms around FP’s torso, burying his face in the awful smelling hospital gown, the liquor still rising from his pores like sweat. FP’s arms wrap around him tight, clutching him like a liferaft, and they cling to one another in the mess of their grief, neither knowing in the moment who needs the comfort more, who is the one being held. 

“I won’t leave you,” promises FP, speaking tight into Archie’s hair, his eyes blurry with emotion. “I won’t leave you, I promise.” 

And he knows his words are cheap, but he holds Fred’s baby tighter than he’s ever held anyone in his life, and he knows for the first time in a long time that there’s someone who needs more comfort than him, knows that there’s a right thing to do. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he says silently to his best friend, drunken and afraid but meaning every word,  _ I’m so fucking sorry but I’ve got him now.  _

_ I won’t let go.  _

* * *

_ Years ago.  _

Mary calls long-distance from Chicago while FP’s making macaroni for Archie’s two youngest kids. He answers the phone while he stirs the pot on the stove, the twins playing quietly with their blocks on the floor at his feet. 

“Archie’s not here,” FP says when he recognizes Mary’s voice. “He’s taking Freddie to her baseball game. I’m on babysitting duty.” 

“I know, I talked to him last night. I wanted to talk to you. I’m being cremated.” 

FP pauses in the middle of taste-testing a noodle, almost chokes it back up. “What, right now?” 

Mary laughs all the way from Chicago. She has her own life on the other end of this phone: a new wife and family, her own law firm in the city. She’d left Riverdale for good once Archie was done with school, though she calls and visits the grandkids often. She’s happy. 

“No, but I’ve decided. And I’ll stay here, I think. Be laid to rest here.” 

FP says he understands. “What’s that got to do with me?” 

“Well, we still own the plot next to Fred. And forgive me, but I’d rather not lie in Riverdale for all eternity. So it’s yours if you want it.” 

FP goes very still and quiet, feeling something like he’s been slapped in the face. One of the twins laughs at his feet, tosses a block across the linoleum floor. 

“I couldn’t,” he whispers, his voice ragged. “I shouldn’t, I-” 

Mary’s tone brooks no nonsense. “Well, I’m not using it one way or another. I think he’d get a kick out of it. It feels right to me. You two buried side by side.” Her voice goes gentle, enough for FP to know she understands how he’s feeling. “But think it over. Like I said, it’s yours if you want it.” 

They don’t talk much after that: exchange pleasantries about how Archie’s doing and the weather in Chicago, Mary filling the silence when FP’s throat closes on him, too thick to speak. “Thanks, Mare,” FP manages when she says goodbye. He hangs up the phone and dabs at his eyes with his sleeve, letting out a long, shaky breath. 

“Poppa!” shrieks one of the twins in alarm when they see his tear-streaked face, latching themselves onto his ankle. “Don’t cry, Poppa.” 

“It’s okay,” FP says quietly, bending down to child-height and letting them run into his arms. “Poppa’s happy.” 

And he is. He is. 

* * *

2019

“This was the one,” he says, pointing and then stowing his hands in his pockets. It’s almost Christmas, and the street outside the jewelry store is crowded with shoppers. They stand together slightly out of the way, under the brass-and-red awning on Main Street. “Stopped by a couple times to look at it. But I never got the courage to take it out.” 

Archie follows his gaze. FP takes a deep shuddering breath that frosts on the winter air, rocking back on his heels in shoes that are too thin for the snow. Archie says nothing, his eyes fixed on the simple diamond ring that FP had pointed out. 

“I was going to ask him to marry me.” 

Tears rise in Archie’s eyes. “He would have said yes.” 

“I don’t know.” FP takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I wish I’d asked. But you can’t change the past, Red.” There’s a lump in his throat he can’t swallow past. “You only change the future.” 

Archie stares at the ring for a long time, and they stand side by side fighting their own tears. “I’ll buy it,” he says impulsively. “I’ll buy it for Veronica one day.” 

FP shakes his head, his eyes wet as he laughs. “Hell no, kid. You give a girl like Veronica a ring as plain as that and you’ll have a storm on your hands. I don’t want to be responsible.” He reaches down and gives Archie’s hand a squeeze, wiping the tears from the side of his nose with his own free hand. “You buy your own ring when the time comes. Your pops would have been proud of you.” 

Tears are streaming freely down Archie’s cheeks. “I wish you’d bought him that one.” He wipes his cheek with the back of his glove. “He would have said yes.” 

“Thanks, kiddo,” FP replies softly. “I think so too.” 

* * *

_Years ago. _

“I’m glad you could come see me, FP.” 

Something about sitting across from Bunny Andrews makes FP feel young again, like he’s a ten year-old trying on the body of an old man. He moves the hospice’s cracked teacup to his saucer and sets the nicer one down by her plate. She was the only of the adults in his life to ever obligingly call him by his initials - in her voice his name sounds gentle and natural, the way it had never done in anyone’s mouth but Fred. “It’s nice to see old faces one last time.” 

“Don’t say that,” FP replies, taking the teapot from her so he can pour. Her hands are very frail, trembling on the heavy pot, yet it was so typical of Bunny to insist to do it herself. She tries to wave him off, but FP refuses, and she laughs at his doting. 

Fred inherited the smile lines around Bunny’s eyes. They’re the most pronounced of the wrinkles on her face. Everyone had always compared Fred to Artie, but in Bunny’s face FP can see a glimpse of what Fred might have looked like if he had grown old. The thought strikes him with the force of being hit by lightning, and he has to squeeze a hand to his thigh to ease the momentary burst of pain in his heart. 

“Oh, I’m not long for this earth now, dear.” Bunny smiles fondly, as though her own mortality is something easily discussed over tea and biscuits. “Don’t you worry your head about it. God has a plan for all of us, and he decided this was my time.” 

Faith was never FP’s strong suit, but it works for Bunny, and sometimes when she talks about it he wishes he’d been raised with the same conviction. He tries to wipe a tear surreptitiously with the back of his hand, only Bunny notices and passes him a handkerchief. 

“Don’t be sad, FP, I have big plans. I have some old friends to see, Lewis Cooper, I haven’t seen him in ages, and Prudence - she just passed last week. And my boys, of course.” She smiles fondly again, her eyes bright and proud. “All my boys. Except for you.” She reaches out and holds his hand on the tablecloth. “But we’ll see each other again one day. And I have a baby I never got to meet. I’ve always wanted to meet them when I got to heaven.” 

FP’s stomach falls - he had known about Mary and Fred’s miscarriage, but not Bunny’s. It seems impossible that life had dealt losing hand after losing hand to the greatest woman he knows, and the injustice of it squeezes his heart like a vice. But life is rarely just to good people. He learned that on the fourth of July many years ago. 

_ How did you do it? _ FP wants to ask.  _ How did you lose everything and keep going?  _

“It’s the Andrews family curse, I’m afraid,” Bunny continues, speaking as though the topic is as common as the weather. “The women outlive the men. It was the same with Artie’s mother, too.” She shakes her head. “But not you, darling. You have a good long life to live.” 

FP drops his eyes to his saucer of tea - despite the therapy he’s finally getting, he’s yet to rebuild much of a sense of self-worth. But Bunny reaches out and holds his hand, tighter than a woman of her age and condition ought to be able to. 

“God put you on this earth for a reason, FP, and he made you live as long as you did. I know you think you’re here by accident, that maybe it should have been you on that road instead of my son, but darling, that’s not true. That’s never been true.” 

The force of her words is what breaks through to him, and soon FP’s throat is too swollen to talk, too frightened and hopeful to even breathe. He knows too that Fred would have told him the same thing, and that’s what really breaks him, tears flooding into his vision and reducing her gentle face to a blur. 

“How did you do it?” he chokes out. “Let them all leave you?” 

“Oh, honey,” she whispers, and cups his cheek. His lip trembles as he tries not to cry. 

“You’re such an old soul,” she says. “Not Fred. He was always so young. He lived for the moment. But you were an old soul, FP. I could see it in your eyes when I met you. You were such a good boy. You were good to us.” 

FP sniffles wetly, feeling even younger under her soft gaze. “Your family saved my life.” 

“I’m glad we did. Life is beautiful, darling. People come and go. But you’ll always remember the love they gave you. I’ll always remember the love you gave my son.” 

FP closes his eyes into her cupped hand, forces the tears back as a nurse approaches Bunny with her wheelchair. They don’t have long together - Bunny’s not well enough to visit for long periods of time. In a few weeks she won’t be well enough for visitors, and she’s requested that this be the last time they saw each other. She’s made her peace with it. FP’s still working on that. 

Bunny stands shakily, retaining every bit of dignity. “Don’t you waste your time missing me, FP. That’s my last request from you. Go and be happy.” 

“Say hi from me,” says FP softly, his throat closing. “Would you?” 

“I will, darling,” says Bunny. “I promise.” 

* * *

2021

The Fred Andrews Memorial Recreation Centre holds Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings three times a week, as well as teen-specific meetings on the side and meetings specifically for the loved ones and families of substance abusers. It has a basketball court and a baseball diamond, showers and free vending machines, drop-in counseling and a walk-in clinic, and a lavender kiosk next to the basketball registration that’s called the Help Desk. Subtle posters installed at child-height in the hallways ask kids to visit if they understand themselves or loved ones to be at risk of neglect or abuse. 

Tomorrow the place will open to the public for the very first time. FP and Archie are walking down the clean-painted halls and installing rainbow stickers in the corners of each windowed door. 

“He would have loved this place,” FP says, pausing at the door labelled Bunks. The FAMRC has clean, well-maintained drop-in sleeping spaces, no questions asked. It beat sleeping in a back booth at Pop’s, that was for certain. He looks at Archie out of the corner of his eye, not trusting himself to keep from sobbing. “He would have loved this place so much. More than anything.” 

Archie is quietly tracing the backward lettering that reads SAFE SPACE, lost in his own thoughts. FP reaches out and smooths over the sticker for him, coaxing out the air bubbles until it’s sealed tight. 

“Archie, he would have been prouder of you than I can ever tell you.” 

There’s a wall of pride flags above the display board behind them. FP had long since laid everything Archie had always suspected on the table about Fred and FP’s romantic history, and Archie was deeply moved by the length of their devotion to one another, the hardship of their romance. In return he’d confessed to his almost-stepfather (he thought of FP as a father now, regardless) what he’d suspected and feared about himself for a long time: that he too liked boys the way he liked girls, didn’t even think he was necessarily limited by those definitions. They’d laughed about it tearfully, the three of them thinking that they were alone. 

That was part of why this place was so important. They were doing for everyone in town what Fred had always tried to do for people himself - simply to help, by any means possible. 

There are stories FP has yet to share with Archie - nights he’d show up outside Fred’s door after being at the receiving end of his father’s drunken and virulent hatred, bruises so dark on his ribs that they were black. These are things he’d rather his godson never know: the horrible isolation of being abandoned, the terror of homelessness, the constant mental torture of being told again and again, with words and with fists, that you were worthless and inadequate, a mistake in the form of a child. 

There’s a wall of pamphlets beside the help desk. One of them he’s had his eye on for a couple days - a pale green cover titled  **coping as survivors of childhood abuse**

FP picks it up at the end of the day, folds it in half, and puts it in his shorts pocket. 

* * *

The day they fill the baseball diamond he walks out into the summer sun and lays down on his back on the pitch. The smell of summer is in the air - hot, packed dirt and mown grass and white sunlight, and he feels so close to Fred with his back against the red diamond that he swears he can almost feel him. There’s big puffy clouds above him, a sky as open and blue as heaven, and squinting into the sun makes squiggles appear in his eyes. 

He’s still lying there when Archie finds him, undoubtedly worried that his prone form indicates another drinking-and-vomiting binge, or some kind of heart attack. 

“Hey,” he says, his hair a vibrant orange blotch against FP’s blue field of vision. “You okay?” 

“Alright, Red,” FP replies, which is the first time in a long time that answer’s been even close to true. He touches the ground beside him, smears a semi-circle in the red dirt with his hand. “Lay down if you want.” 

Archie does, settles on his back with their shoulders together. FP swallows a lump in his throat. 

“Feels close to your dad,” he says. 

Archie’s silent, no doubt lost in his own memories of Fred on oh-so-many baseball diamonds: Fred had taught him to pitch almost as soon as he had taught him to walk. He’d never been prouder than the day Archie had thrown a wobbly curveball straight through Mary’s china cabinet - had relayed it to FP in joyful spurts of laughter from across the fence that had separated their two yards. 

“Your dad was happy,” FP speaks up at last, not really knowing he was going to say the words before he was saying them, the wind fluttering along the mown grass in a great summer-y sweep toward their heads. “That Fourth of July. He was happy. I know that now.” 

Archie says nothing, but seems to hold his breath as though waiting for more. FP blinks furiously to stem to flow of tears, and forces himself to speak: 

“There was nothing your dad loved more than driving, especially in the summer. He was like that for as long as I can remember.” He glances quickly at Archie, whose face betrays no emotion. “The day he got his license he showed up outside my trailer blaring the horn. Woke the whole damn trailer park up.” He smiles, though tears are blurring his vision. “That’s how I remember him best. Driving in his bare feet, the windows open, the sun in his hair, the radio blaring. That was your dad.” 

He can hear Archie take a deep breath out, struggling not to cry, and he squeezes his hand tight, Archie’s grip strong but uncertain. 

“We’d drive and drive and drive for hours, and I’ve never seen him happier in my life. You couldn’t pay that kid to do chores most of the year, but if your Grandma would ask him to run down to the store in the summer he’d be up and grabbing the car keys, just because he could. Summer was his favourite time of year. He’d wait all year to roll the windows down. You know how he’d get up early every Fourth of July and drive to Greendale to buy those steaks?” 

Archie nods, his red hair brushing the dirt. “He said the steaks were better down there.”

FP laughs. “You can buy steaks just as good at the butcher shop on Main Street. Your dad just wanted an excuse to get on the road.” 

He can see Fred in his mind’s eye as he talks, an image as small as a postage-stamp, almost too bright to look at: Fred that July day, beaming and happy, relaxed and carefree with his arm dangling from the driver’s window and the radio on. Fred seeing a beautiful girl in trouble and slowing down, nowhere special to be, smiling out the window at his own ability to help out. He can see all of it - the dusty stretch of road, the sunlight on the windshield. And Fred. Fred, happy. It’s no empty consolation to himself, no desperate hope. He knows as simply as he knows his own name that he’s right. 

“I think he was as happy as he could have been, Red. I think he died happy.” 

Archie runs his hands through the red dirt, spills it over his palms like he’s holding something precious. Then he rolls over so he’s facing FP on the diamond, his eyes wet with tears. 

“Tell me a story about him,” Archie begs, his voice very small. “A baseball story. He’s never going to tell me again. So you have to. Please.” 

FP reaches out and strokes Archie’s cheek, smoothing a tear away even as he feels the wetness sliding down the skin of his own face. Then a smile breaks over his aching cheeks like sun through a cloud, forcing down the urge to sob as he pictures Fred in his minds’ eye, young and happy in his uniform, flecks of gold in his brown eyes. Archie looks so much like his dad. 

“Okay, listen close, Red. We were down by two runs against our biggest rival, the Baxter High Badgers..” 

* * *

2019

The truck radio was still playing when FP got there. 

The street had been closed off awhile back, traffic diverted, so the dusty stretch of road where the love of his life had died was empty. The paramedics had beat him there and the body was gone, or at least covered and moved out of his vision, which was a good thing since he’d have collapsed if he’d seen it and never in a thousand years have been able to do his job. 

But the truck radio was still playing. Actually it was a cassette player - an ancient amenity that Archie (who knew nothing, yet, of what had happened) had always teased his dad for having. Fred had put that in back in the summer of ‘96, and kept the glovebox stashed with his old school favourites. 

FP had opened the truck door - it had been hanging open when Fred was struck, someone else had closed it - and pressed eject. The cab of the truck was blurry through his tears, but it looked like it always had, smelled like it always had - sunlight and dust, a picture of Archie pinned to the sun-visor, cassette case for  _ Born In The U.S.A. _ stuffed in the cupholder, their initials scratched on the dash. A flannel shirt was lying abandoned in the passenger seat, because the day had been too warm for long sleeves. 

The shirt hurts more than anything because it makes him think about it. He can see in his mind’s eye how Fred would have pulled it off his small shoulders while driving and tossed it there, relishing in the sun and the heat on his bare arm out the driver’s side window, and that single, potent image (Fred, in the sunlight, smiling) is so unbearably raw that it feels akin to plunging your whole fist into a wound. 

He takes it out and holds it in his hands - it’s Fred’s favourite, the one he had worn what felt like centuries ago at Pop’s, reliving their glory days with their kids - and only then does it hit him that this had been on Fred’s back only hours before, that only  _ hours ago  _ \- 

That’s when he breaks down and cries like he’s never cried before in his life, not when his mom died, not ever. Not over anything. 

He holds it close to his face and breathes in the smell, and it does still smell like him, and he waits for Fred to appear from around the back of the truck or for Fred to clap his shoulder and tell him it’s all right, and when he doesn’t he cries even harder, cries until he’s on his hands and knees with each burning breath cutting into his lungs like a rusty hacksaw. Cries until he’s sick, knees drawn up to his chest, his whole world in shambles. Cries cursing every fucking miserable breath that he takes while Fred’s gone, Fred’s gone and he’s still alive,  _ fucking still alive _ on this  _ miserable piece of shit earth _ that let his baby go. 

It’s only when he’s done that he remembers to check the cassette player, the scene unfurling again in his mind’s eye as he pulls himself numb and unsteady to his feet, the taste of copper in his mouth from screaming - Fred pulling off his flannel shirt, Fred singing along to the radio, the sunlight streaming in the windshield, the truck slowing to a stop. And the music playing. (Born in the USA, right? It was the fourth of July, only-) 

It’s not an album when he hits eject. It’s a plain black cassette with a white label, on which a sloppy teenage hand has written  **fred & fp summer of ‘91.**

It was a mixtape, made for him countless summers ago off songs recorded from Oscar Andrews’ portable radio. It was their songs - the songs they sang together a thousand times on a thousand summer car rides. 

He brings the cassette to Archie because it seems important to do so.  _ This is what your father was listening to _ , he says, and avoids his eyes while his throat fills fresh with blood. _ It’s yours if you want it.  _

But he doesn’t give him the shirt. He takes it home and cradles it in his arms, buries his face into it for a week until the last of the smell is gone, wearing it on top of his own clothes every day until it’s threadbare and crumbling. When it’s worn so thin that it’s breaking down he hangs it inside his own so that their skins are pressed together, doing it properly, threading arm through arm and cuffing the sleeves. 

Before he hangs it up, he stands in front of his closet holding it for a long time. 

* * *

_ Years ago.  _

Archie and FP attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings together, and go sober at the same time, so that their anniversaries always fall on the same day. They go out for ice cream after every meeting. Even in the winter. 

One day Archie takes out a ring box and places it, open, on the table between them. 

“This is the one, Pops.” he says. “Tell me what you think.” 

* * *

Freddie Andrews is born on the hottest day of the summer, weighing eight pounds and seven ounces. To everyone’s surprise it’s Veronica who insists on the name - won’t even consider any of the more feminine names that Archie had compiled out of their stacks of baby books for backup. FP’s ushered into the delivery room with the couple, his heart pounding so hard that he’s sure everyone in the room can hear it, and ten minutes later he’s holding Archie’s firstborn daughter in his arms, staring down into her bright red face as she screams her tiny lungs out. She’d make a helluva rock singer. 

“Your dad-” A bruising lump rises in FP’s throat the size of a softball, and swallowing it feels like trying to swallow glass. Heat floods his face and tears obscure his vision, his voice cracks as he forces himself to speak: “Your dad would have given anything to be here right now, Red, anything.” 

Archie looks at Veronica, who gives him a smile and a nod as FP hands her daughter back to her to hold. The new father takes a deep breath and turns to FP, waiting until FP’s eyes have reluctantly moved away from the tiny infant to speak. 

“We’ve already chosen the godparents but we want her to call you Grandpa.” 

FP’s mouth drops open, his eyes burning with the effort of holding back tears. 

“I couldn’t, Red,” he stammers, fidgeting awkwardly with his fingers. “I couldn’t, that’s your- your dad should have been that. I couldn’t -” 

Archie cuts him off, his voice calming and competent and  _ adult _ \- he’s grown up before FP’s eyes, he has his own kid now, for christsake, and when the hell did that happen? “It doesn’t have to be Grandpa. You can choose. But we want you to be that for her. If you’re willing.” 

FP just stares at him, tears running down his cheeks at last, and wordlessly nods his head. 

“Yeah,” is all he manages, voice wobbly like a kid, but Archie understands, throwing his arms around FP’s neck and squeezing him for all he’s worth. 

* * *

Years later. 

“Can we talk about my dad?” 

They’re in the car on the way home from a meeting, the windshield wipers beating in time to the soft music on the radio. The headlights cut through the driving rain just enough to see by. Archie’s in his thirties now, parenting his daughter while running the rec centre and teaching boxing classes in between. FP never stops reminding him that he’s making his dad proud. 

FP clears his throat, now, his fingers tightening involuntarily on the wheel. “Sure,” he says softly. “We can talk about your dad.” 

Archie turns to look at him, the question already on his lips. “Was my dad depressed?” 

It’s not what FP had expected: he frowns as he peers out the windshield into the dark. He needs his glasses full-time, now, but with them on he can drive just fine. He complains heartily to anyone who will hear whenever he gets letters in the mail about re-taking his drivers’ test. 

“My therapist wants to diagnose me with depression,” Archie explains softly. “She wanted me to ask.” He launches quickly into an explanation before FP can gather his thoughts. “She wants to start me on medication, but it wouldn’t really be necessary. It would just help me function better sometimes. But it wouldn’t be bad if I didn’t take it.” He chews his knuckle. “I haven’t decided yet.” 

FP and Archie have been nothing but wholly honest with one another for years: FP takes a deep breath now and resolves to keep it that way. 

“Your dad had a lot of things going on. I think he had a lot of issues we didn’t talk about. But if you’re asking if your dad was suffering - hell, no, Red. I told you he was happy, and I really, truly, believe that. Fred loved life. He was happy. But I wish he’d had the chance to go his life without struggling. And I think if he knew you had the chance he’d be over the fucking moon that you got to take it.” 

Archie turns his head to look at him, his eyes bright and trusting and wet with tears. FP feels a rush of love for him spill up into his throat, his breath catching with the force of it. 

“I can only speak from my experience, kid, but if I didn’t take my meds, I don’t know if I’d be here. You know that? And I’m happy to be here.” 

“He had an eating disorder, didn’t he?” Archie blurts out. FP sucks in a deep breath and he swallows hard, steadying his voice. “I could tell. He never ate when he was stressed. And when I came home from Canada” - Archie never talks about the trauma of his fugitive days, not even with FP - “he’d lost so much weight.” 

“Like I said, Red, your dad had a lot going on he didn’t get help for. But yeah.” FP quiets, chewing his lip. “I think you’re right.” 

“I noticed it the year Jason died: he only ever ate if I was eating. I used to bring extra food home if I knew I was going out for dinner.” Archie stares at the sweep of the wiper blades. “I used to be like that. Not the same, I would eat fine, but I used to exercise myself half to death. Instead of sleeping. And it kind of felt good in this awful way, depriving yourself of something. And I guess I see how you could get addicted to that, and it could feel like the right kind of control. But I don’t think I’ll ever have that problem. But if Freddie ever-” 

“Freddie’s six, Archie.” 

“Yeah, but-” 

“Arch.” FP lays a hand gently on Archie’s shoulder. “Freddie’s got you looking out for her. And her grandma. I’m not worried.” 

“That makes one of us.” Archie swallows hard. “And if she’s depressed too -” 

FP lets out a quiet sigh. “You inherit shit from your parents, kiddo. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m living proof of that. We all are. But they also give you the chance to do better. And if you have that chance, you have to take it. That’s what I learned from your dad.” 

Archie nods, his eyes trusting. 

“Red, If Freddie’s therapist said she was depressed and the meds could help, would you tell her to take them?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Then there’s your answer, hm?” FP gives his shoulder a squeeze. “The one thing - the only thing - your dad didn’t do was take care of himself first. I think he’d be fucking thrilled if he knew you were doing him one better.” 

Archie wipes his eyes. “I get it now, you know? He always said _‘you’ll understand when you’re older, you’ll understand when you have a kid.’_ And I do.” He laughs in a watery way, wiping his nose. “I understand too late.” 

FP smiles slightly, watching him. “Your dad had a lot of baggage, bud. And a lot of it belonged to his dad at some point. And now you’re carrying around everything of your dad’s too. Put it down, Archie. Put it all down. You’ll feel a lot better.” 

Archie nods. “Did you put yours down?” 

“About ten years ago.” FP reaches out again, combs his fingers through coppery hair. “And kid, I don’t miss any of that shit for a second.”

* * *

**Now. **

Gladys calls on Sunday, which is a surprise because no one knows where Gladys is, and they haven’t heard from her for years now. The last anyone had heard of her was that she was down South somewhere, or maybe out West, or hell, let’s face it - no one would ever know what Gladys was up to if she didn’t want to be found. Her voice is rough with age, but she sounds pleased with herself: if FP knows her well, and he does, she’s probably as sharp and spry at eighty as she’d been at eighteen. When she speaks, though, her voice is soft. 

“I hear you’re on your way out, old friend.” 

FP smiles, cradling the receiver against his cheek. “Hey Glads.” 

It’s been a long time since he heard from his ex-wife, but the conversation comes as easily as if they were newlyweds. They called themselves _ the three amigos _ once, though Fred and Gladys had been friends first, and Fred and FP friends even before that, and separately. It was always that way with Fred - he was friends with everyone, and he brought people together. 

Gladys tries to hide her fondness for him, but it bleeds out through the phone anyway. They’re too old to pretend, and Fred, or the memory of him, is still bringing them together. It would be unkind to make believe there was still cause for hatred. 

“To what do I owe the honour?” Fp teases her in a rasp, meaning: I know you’re not as unhappy with me as you want me to think. 

Gladys snorts, pretending to be gruff. “Jellybean told me she got to say goodbye. I was jealous.” 

She had - his daughter had stopped with her girlfriend on their way to a three-month music festival expedition out West in a brightly painted VW van. FP knows he’s not to thank for any small piece of her brilliance: his daughter had grown up separated from him, and it was a small honour that she’d forgiven him enough to want to see him one last time in his dying year. But Jellybean was whip-smart and kind, her mother’s spitting image, and she had opted to forgive and forget her father’s absence. “I’m happy for you,” she had said, hair pulled back into a messy braid on the retirement home sofa, her girlfriend’s arm around her waist, and FP had returned the sentiment. 

“I’m proud of her.” 

“She’s proud of you, old boy. He would be too.” 

There it was. They could talk on the phone all they liked, but they both knew there was a voice missing, a link gone from their chain. His voice catches - only Gladys would know how much the phrase meant to him. 

FP’s voice is trembling. “Thanks, Gladys.”

“Thanks nothing,” she retorts kindly. “You know I’m right. You building that rec centre, going sober, taking care of Archie all these years. He’d be proud of you both.” A pause, like even Gladys had felt enough emotion to cry. If anyone could do it to her, it was Fred. “Just say hi for me when you get there.” 

“Promise,” says FP, smiling tiredly. A cardinal perches on the feeder outside his window - he watches it through the glass. “See you around, Glads.” 

* * *

There’s not a lot left in his room to pack up. 

FP grew up without much, and he’ll go out that way too, though at some point he had had more - the toasters and books and knick knacks and trinkets that he had envied at the Andrews house when he was a boy. But it will be easier for Archie this way to pack up after he’s gone, and FP likes making things easier for Archie, because it’s what Fred would have wanted. 

His closet in the retirement home has four shirts and three pairs of pants, a pair of shoes, a bathrobe, and a shoebox on the top closet shelf that holds everything he has left. All of it fits into his empty suitcase, with a little bit of room left on top. FP takes down the twin shirts that hang inside one another at the back of his closet, and very carefully and delicately removes Fred’s old shirt from inside his own. 

He puts his old shirt on top of the suitcase and shuts the zipper. This leaves nothing left inside his room except for his pictures - those, he figures, Archie or someone else will have to put away. Hopefully it won’t be too hard. The headboard of his bed is encircled by a series of small photo frames: some old, and some new. FP puts Fred’s shirt on again, careful not to tear the old fabric. On instinct he pulls the collar to his nose and breathes in, though, of course, the smell of his partner is gone from it. Still, it feels good to wear it again. It feels like coming home. 

The cassette tape slides into his old radio with a click that jolts him back to memories of his youth. Archie had returned it to him earlier this year, his father’s teenage marker-scrawl so faded from handling that the tracklist was worn away. It’s okay, because FP knows the order of songs on this one by heart. Remembers screaming them out the window of a VW bus older than he was, the sun streaking in through the windows and Fred laughing in bare feet. 

FP sits down on the bed as the tape begins to play and puts his glasses on to see the photos better. There’s himself and Archie, arms around each other, on the day the rec centre had opened. Freddie on his shoulders when she was only three, being carried through a maze of apple trees at the pumpkin patch. Himself and Fred on the day they’d started Andrews construction, Fred’s eyes as kind and sparkling brown in the creased photo as if his image were alive. Freddie in her baseball uniform, the twins at the fourth of July parade, Archie on his first day of college, even FP beaming - photos taken by Archie - on the days he’d finally earned first his high school, and then a college diploma. 

When he’s too tired to keep looking he pulls the shirt off and bunches it in his arms, laying down at an angle so he can still see some of the photos, the old flannel shirt under his cheek. The arm of his glasses bites into his ear - he takes them off and folds them up for the last time, leaves them sitting on his nightstand next to his favourite of the photos - himself and Fred, age seventeen, outside of their VW bus. 

He closes his eyes and holds Fred’s shirt in his arms, even though it doesn’t smell like him anymore, thinks of the nights he spent holding the real thing. Feels happy instead of sad for the first time. 

His arms are heavy, and then his eyes are heavy, and then he’s sleeping. 

And then he’s gone. 

* * *

It’s a rainy day for a funeral, but the air is warm. Archie kneels before the tombstone on the dirt, Freddie by his side. She’s grown into a freckle-faced teenager, all long limbs and goofy smiles, though she’s sad today, her eyes filling with tears as she stares at the name carved into the stone. 

The service was almost as crowded as Fred’s had been, owing mostly to every kid from the community centre showing up with somber faces. Though FP’s thirty years of work for the rec centre had largely been invisible - maintenance, construction, accounting, repairs, gathering donations: quiet, steady, humble work that he did with passion and care, he was known and beloved by everyone who had ever spent time there. Of course, he had always done his best to spend time with the kids - jam sessions in the music room, the occasional pickup football game before his knees gave out. He’d given his heart and soul to the place - they both had. 

The eulogy had been longer than his father figure had ever had expected, Archie’s sure. He’d listened to the celebrant speak about FP’s work, his devotion to the community, the loved ones he was leaving, the years of sobriety of which he was so proud. Archie thinks he would have liked the end most:  _ Predeceased by his partner, Fred Andrews.  _ It felt right. 

People are leaving the gravesite now - even Freddie’s getting antsy, shifting from foot to foot on the wet ground as Veronica places a calming hand on her shoulder. The bouquet of flowers drips rainwater down onto the fresh earth. A few lonely rays of sun are breaking through the clouds - they streak the wet sky with thin beams of rainbow. 

Archie’s well in his forties now, and his own knees are starting to ache from bending. He slips a hand inside his rain jacket and touches the cool surface of the sober chip he’d slid into his pocket. Withdrawing his hand, he places it on the grave, tucks it fondly behind the curl of a damp cala lily petal so that it’s invisible to everyone but himself. 

“Safe travels, Dad,” he whispers, and kisses the stone goodbye. 

**Author's Note:**

> _"don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, time has been so generous to us…we conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space…we are synchronized, now forever./i love you." _
> 
> _\- felix gonzalez torres _


End file.
